TV Reviews: Hollywood (Ryan Murphy's latest), Upload, Waco

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So much good TV! The list of what I'm watching is growing exponentially with Ozark's 3rd season and Dead To Me's 2nd season starting to jump into my rotation on top of Castle Rock's 2nd season.

The following YouTube video covers (in order) Unorthodox (Netflix), Hollywood (Netflix), Upload (Amazon Prime), Waco (Paramount Network), and Middleditch and Schwartz (Netflix). Two of these are covered in my last post. I'll cover the other three in more detail below along with "Never Have I Ever" which is a gem. 

Hollywood (Netflix)-Ryan Murphy's umpteenth flashy TV show tells the story of the Golden Age of Hollywood through the memoir of  (for lack of a better word) Hollywood pimp Scotty Bowers. Bowers opened a gas station in Los Angeles after the war where he arranged for discrete sexual liaisons for a number of men and women including many closeted celebrities. He wrote about it in a tell-all book that's a loose guide here. Key word is "loose" here. Bowers story is flattened in the service of the story that Ryan Murphy and crew really want to tell which is an intersectionalist revisionist story about how great inclusion is.

The series has been unfavorably compared to Tarantino's revisionist yarns because he's not as strong of a storyteller to pull off the difficult tightrope. Aside from bad storytelling, another charge is that his often-sensationalist bents have proved offensive here as he's dishonoring Rock Hudson by completely making up his backstory. Personally, I'm more shocked by Scotty Bowers who's pimping industry was more like sex slavery: His sex workers don't have the option of refusing down jobs that make them uncomfortable. When the Scotty Bowers figure (Dylan McDermott) makes the case to one of his straight workers that he should service gay people because they have to live in the shadows and this will make them happy (yes that really happens), it's a pretty egregious conflation between the kind of sex positivity and a progressive work space.

But the series suffers more from not having a deep focus. I can push aside the blatant progressive messaging but if it's not trying to say the kinds of things that have been said a hundred times in better ways ("Glow", "Orange is the New Black," etc.), this is a show that glides on the belief that just showing people in Hollywood of yore is enough of a story. It's borderline watchable but not highly memorable.

Upload (Netflix)-I've never particularly found the idea of human consciousness particularly appealing. "Transcendence" and "Ghost in the Shell" are among my least favorite films (you'd think I would have learned my mistake the first time) out and I found the gobbledy gook about how the mind works in "Lucy" to be dull. But if the mind isn't the sole focus of the show, then we're onto something.

From the guy who adapted the Office to American television (Greg Daniels), this show is so ironclad in its world-building that there aren't many plot holes to fish around in. Unlike "Star Trek", this is a world that broaches the topic of post-scarcity realistically.

The basic gist is a guy dies in a version of the future where people’s consciousnesses can get uploaded into a sort-of virtual retirement community.

Getting into this man-made version of heaven is like shopping for a retirement community and the dead rely on their living families to continually pay the bills.  Our protagonist (Robbie Arnell) is a man whose ticket to Lakeview (a place that looks like Alberta’s Lake Louise, see below) is sponsored by a rich girlfriend (Allegra Edwards) who’s um...let's just say she's got issues. His single mom can’t afford to pay his bills putting him in a situation where he's indentured to her. It's creepy. Like Alexander Payne's underrated film "Downsizing", this is a series that explores how a humanity-saving solution doesn't necessarily solve socio-economic disparity.

The series features a good love triangle and a solid group of supporting characters including a shallow self-proclaimed best friend (Kevin Bigley), a kid who died at the age of 11 (Rhys Slack) who is stuck in the afterlife that way, and typical office politics for the people who operate the system in the real world. It's not particularly funny, but it's breezy, thoughtful and deeply effective as light science-fiction.

Waco (Paramount)-Like "People vs OJ Simpson" (one of Ryan Murphy's best projects), this story is written in history and the series is about revisiting something we already remember in the news from a distanced lens. Think prestige TV's version of I Love the 90s with better actors. And damn, this is a fine ensemble with Andrea Riseborough ("Birdman"), Paul Sparks ("Greatest Showman"), John Leguazimo, Melissa Benoist ("Glee", "Whiplash"), Keiran Culkin ("Succession") and the great Michael Shannon. At the center of it is Taylor Kitsch (Taylor who? Yeah, not sure who he is either) who plays cult leader  David Koresh.

As for portraying who's the good and bad guy, the show plays it relatively even-handedly. The show makes it pretty clear that David Koresh is a non-violent person. He and his followers horde guns which serves as a relevant commentary on how many Americans west of the Mississippi view gun rights. Michael Shannon's stand-out performance as an FBI agent in charge of the negotiation is also distanced from moral judgments because he's not the person who screwed up the situation in the first place. The central question with him is whether he'll be able to defuse the situation and that's a good ingredient to a thriller.

The show also attempts to ask what made Koresh so charismatic and I didn't leave with a clear answer. On the one hand, he unilaterally makes decisions for the group and he is the only person in the compound who gets to have sex AND that includes with all the other parishioner's wives. On the flipside, he's an ace at leading bible study. So who knows? At the end of the day, I felt that there was an answer that made sense to the characters but I didn't feel like I could actually live in those characters' shoes. That might have been the difference between a good and great show.

Never Have I Ever TV Review

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Never Have I Ever (Netflix)-From Mindy Kaling (and some other non-Mindy Kaling entity) comes a teen show that’s, for lack of a better word, all that and a bag of chips. The protagonist Devi is an Indian-American and teams up with two other minority students (Fabiola and Eleanor) to form a trio of inseparable friends. But that’s not all they’re defined by and the show doesn’t suggest that this is about whites verse other. The token dream guy is Asian as well. Eleanor, who is East Asian, is also defined by a having a deadbeat mother which bucks the trend of that ethnicity. 

The world of this high school is also one that exists without overt bullying.  Some people are less cool than others, sure, but this is a far cry from the slushie-in-the-face trope of Glee (as far as we’re shown; there could be a serious battle royale in the back for all we know. It’s kind of refreshing to see a world where teenagers aren’t actively trying to make the nerds miserable. It’s also possibly a more accurate depiction of high schools in 2020 as anti-bullying campaigns have gone into effect.

The show won me over many times over by zigging where I expected it to zag. Devi resolves to break out of her sheltered Indian-American constraints and get a boyfriend and by the end of the very first episode, the hottest guy in the school agrees to have sex with her. It seems like the show has jumped the shark in the first 30 minutes but fortunately things don’t work out that easily.

Pretty much nothing in Devi’s life is predictable along the lines of a teen show. The biggest jerk in her social orbit suddenly becomes legitimately friendly and even falls for her while her two best friends turn on her for being a bad friend. But are they in the right? Is Devi a bad daughter or someone restrained by impossible cultural norms? The answers aren’t easy and the show isn’t the most hilarious on TV but it’s brilliant and emotional without being melodramatic or heavy.

Six Observations from Rewatching First Two Seasons of “The Office”

The beauty of the Pam-Jim relationship is that Pam doesn’t comes across as more office hot than a bombshell. 

Whatever natural attractiveness she has (although admittedly this is subjective) is masked by an unattractive meekness. That Jim is into Pam is more about how he connects specifically with her than being a player who'll set his eyes on the most attractive girl in the Dunder-Mifflin office.

Jim might have been better cast as someone who's not as objectively good looking (he was, after all, a member of the handsome men’s club) but at the same time, Jon Krasinski played the part very well. As Krasinski started to accrue more good-looking girlfriends (Amy Adams I can buy, but then Rashida Jones?) the illusion that Jim wasn’t good with the ladies was broken a little.  

It’s likely deliberate that we know so little about Roy.

He plays into the stereotypes of blue collar workers and his language is a little blue but it’s not out of the question that he’s a more well-rounded individual if one were to look closer. We know that Roy gets along with Pam’s mom so he can’t be a complete rube.  

The sticking point here is that we see things from Jim's point of view and he's just the other guy. He might be a good guy for Pam, he might not, but it's not for Jim to know.

Holy crap, I forgot Michael Scott was a terrible person.

The writing staff had certain obligations to connect Michael Scott to David Brent so this could be considered a true spiritual spin-off. That included putting a pilot that was shot nearly line-for-line from the British pilot (a move that Greg Daniels would later regret). That episode includes the extremely thoughtless ruse of Michael Scott play firing Pam which crossed a line. Although the writers intended to gradually improve the character so that he’d have more longevity than David Brent (a man designed to be fired over the course of twelve episodes), they started from a pretty low point of awfulness. While it made good cringe-comedy, Michael was not just unsympathetic but just a terrible human being at first and I wouldn’t have blamed most viewers for quitting the show in the first season.

Even if the #metoo era hadn't come along, he should have been fired for the way he treats Pam and hits on Ryan (even if he isn't gay) and sends inappropriate content.  He also comes off as worse in today's era not just because of inappropriate behavior but he was a gaslighter before the term was coined. He denies truth whenever convenient and continually avoids responsibility for the things he says and promises.

Daryl is an undefined bully. 

 On two or three occasions in these two seasons, Darryl just tries to intimidate Michael physically which just made me plain uncomfortable.

In the basketball episode, it is somewhat justified considering Michael cheated but it also hints at a lack of definition in their relationship that no chain of command or authority is established between the two. When Michael gets back from vacation with Jan and Craig distributes pictures, there is no punishment. Michael is shown to be more lenient to people he thinks are “cool” but there’s almost no oversight between Michael and the warehouse and I’m chalking this up to a lack of world-building.

In a Season 2 episode where Darryl intimidates Michael to join a union, he comes off as worse, because he knows that Michael is weak-willed and wants to be popular and Darryl is consciously milking that weakness to get what he wants.

Toby is awful at his job

 
I would argue the biggest failure in Dunder-Mifflin is Toby. In “The Merger”, Michael repeatedly humiliates an overweight man, puts him in the uncomfortable position of explaining his grievances in front of a room full of colleagues, and then fires him after he clearly says he quit (more gaslighting). Toby is a witness to all this and does nothing. There’s also simply letting Michael’s alternative diversity sensitivity workshop to happen for more than 30 seconds or allowing Michael to talk about his relationships so publicly or give inappropriate awards at the Dundee’s multiple years in a row.

It’s understandable that Toby is too reticent to deal with Michael half the time because it paints his character well as a pushover but the early seasons needed a foil.  Occasionally, when Toby is on his game—Quite beautifully shooting down the idea of inviting boy scouts to casino night or confiscating inappropriate material in “Diwali”- the show is working much better as Michael has a substantive foil to react against.

The show does occasionally highlight being a leader is tough

It’s true that a lot of the disasters are Michael’s fault but he does get placed in a lot of unwinnable situations. In “The Alliance”, Oscar enlists him to donate to a fun run without properly informing him that his donation is per-mile and not a one-time fee. When Michael discovers the error, Oscar calls him distasteful for reneging on a pledge knowing full-well that Michael wants to look good in front of the cameras and that Oscar rushed the form in front of him. Nearly the exact same thing happens when Carol sells Michael an apartment as a condo with misleading information about whether he’s paying a one or a three-year mortgage.

In some instances, Michael just can’t win to start with. When Jan entrusts him to fire someone, it’s almost as if they want to torture him. Surely, they could just ask Michael for his feedback and make the trigger-pulling decision at the corporate level if they know that Michael doesn’t like firing people.

The perfect scenario is a mix of the two: In “Health Care” Michael makes the ill-fated decision to pass the buck on health care to Dwight (not a good choice), but as the employees’ demands on Dwight show, there’s no such thing as a health plan that would satisfy everyone.

Six More of My Favorite Journalism Stories-Gig Young, It's Always Sunny, Parkour and more

1. The Strange Case of Oscar Winner Gig Young-The Film Experience (2020)

Gig Young won the 1969 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for "They Shoot Horses Don't They." Eight years after winning the award, he shot his fifth wife in his New York apartment and himself two minutes later. This makes him the only person to win an acting Oscar and commit murder (that we know of. Maybe Julie Andrews secretly went on a murder spree after her "Mary Poppins" win). Because both witnesses are dead, we don't have all the answers but I've always found his story compelling and have wanted to publish it for nine years. When the 50th Anniversary of his Oscar came up (April, 1970) I shopped this around and was paid a kill fee from one publication and than got another one to publish it. An added bonus was that the publication (www.thefilmexperience.net, an excellent one-stop source for Oscar news and more) had just done an excellent retrospective on the April 1970 Oscars so my piece fit in really well.

Link: http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2020/4/29/50th-anniversary-the-strange-case-of-gig-youngs-oscar.html

2. Sometimes Waiting is the Hardest Part-Zebra Magazine (2020)

Occasionally, editors send you messages on Facebook which seems kind of weird at first but it does allow for faster communication. In this case, it was fortuitous because I had just posted a status message that I tested negative for COVID-19 and my editor jumped on it immediately. She wanted me to do a personal story. I decided to write something more personal about my fear of time and how not having anything to do suddenly made me a more free person. I veered into talking about this magical summer I had when I was 15 with my grandparents in the Florida Keys and did very little.  This was one of the very few pieces I've written where I get to go personal.

Link: https://thezebra.org/2020/04/27/sometimes-waiting-is-the-hardest-part-one-writers-experience-with-fear-delay-and-a-virus-with-no-name/

3. Did the Writers Initially Intend for The Character on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia to be Gay-Screen Prism (2016)

There is an amazing YouTube channel called the Take that used to be called Screenprism and was more article-focused at the time. I was paid a small amount to contribute articles but was really attracted to their form of academic writing. I'm a big fan of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and the subject of Mac's sexual orientation has often been a big topic of debate. Like many things in "It's Always in Sunny in Philadelphia" the character depth is extremely deep and clever, but Mac's orientation feels like a slightly sloppy directional shift and I thought this was worth exploring.

http://screenprism.com/insights/article/has-the-character-of-mac-on-its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia-always-been-ga

4. We Won't Stop Racism by Blacklisting Liam Neeson-The Federalist (2019)

At the Federalist (which I'm not sure is still present tense for me, haven't had as much editor communication), I had the chance to express my opinions on the excesses of woke thinking in front of an audience. In times of such polarization it felt very cathartic to opine on how I think the world could be fixed. While this is a very right wing site (the commenters, in particular, are extreme), I don't see my publication on the site as an endorsement of their other positions and I think those readers benefit from my centrist views. This article's headline is a bit non-evergreen as people reading a year later will have no idea what Liam Neeson did but hey I didn't pick the headline.

The article spoke of a personal experience I had at a convention of people who I assumed would have opposite views of me.  In person I was surprised to find that these same simplistic platitudes I'd heard yelled over twitter were coming from people I had more empathy for when they expressed their voices in more than 140 characters. That formed the basis of my article against both parties that we needed to stop creating headlines out of twitter squabbles. This article was rejected twice by the same publication before they accepted it which is a first for me.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/02/20/wont-solve-racism-blacklisting-liam-neeson/

5. Local Chefs with Ties to Louisiana Bring Mardi Gras Celebration-DC Line (2020)
This was just an excuse to go to a happening Mardi Gras festival. People worried about the ethics of using journalism for a free admission needn't worry because I still had to pay a (reduced) fee but often journalism is a great excuse to get out of the house and experience something fun. I'm not necessarily confident enough in my dancing to just bust out moves during musical celebrations, so I felt a lot more comfortable observing from a distance and taking pictures.

This story was originally pitched in 2017 for the Washington Post Magazine when I knew an editor there and it wasn't until 2020 that I published it and it's always nice to use an idea that's been waiting in the pipeline.

https://thedcline.org/2020/03/06/local-celebrity-chef-and-friends-bring-louisiana-spirit-to-mardi-gras-fundraiser-for-dc-central-kitchen/

6. Cherry Blossoms Come Under Threat-The DC Line (2020)

The impetus for the story wasn't really impressive: I saw a blurb about it somewhere else and thought it would be ripe for pitching somewhere else. After circulating it around, the DC Line picked it up. I started out walking to the Jefferson Memorial where the action was and this was a great idea because I got a great feel for the place by being on the ground and got 3 of my 5 sources on site. I talked to a jogger really quick and got a quote from her and found a couple tour guides who were generous with their time. Sometimes when I go on site, I don't necessarily plan it and this was one of those times where it was equally as likely that I could have come back with nothing and had to go back to the traditional route of waiting for phone calls and PR people who will take too long to get back to you.

An example of that was a park ranger I talked who referred me to the communications office for the National Park Service who never got back to me over the course of the entire article's length. Fortunately, I went to a park ranger and asked him to talk to me about it off the record. This was one of the last pieces I did before Corona went into effect. Aww, how I miss on site reporting.

https://thedcline.org/2020/03/24/entering-its-second-year-initiative-strives-to-protect-tidal-basin-and-its-cherry-trees-at-a-pivotal-moment/

7. Beast Coast Returns to Rosslyn-Arlington Magazine (2019)

I was walking around Rosslyn a few years ago when I noticed people doing flips and stuff. The difference between me and someone who's not a reporter: I dropped what I was doing and asked what was going on. This story resulted. I only got to do the preview but I later got to go to the event and it was a lot of fun to see people running and jumping.

https://www.arlingtonmagazine.com/beast-coast-parkour-returns-to-rosslyn/

8. Larry Hogan's Plan to Widen Toll Lanes Stalled by Opposition-Washington Times (2019)

This one was a bit exhausting because it involved driving approximately 45 minutes (over an hour and a half in rush hour traffic) to a couple meetings. I lost my phone in the first instance and had an expensive zipcar ride trying to get it back with no results. Because the pictures were on the phone, I had to go a second time to the middle of nowhere to get pictures.

I am eternally indebted to some activists who gave me a ride. On the way over, I tried to explain that I had the information I needed but I soon realized there was a tremendous amount of new information to absorb. When writing the transportation beat for the Washington Times, I rarely think about transportation but I come into contact with people who are very passionate about the issue. It's slightly inspiring to see people civically engaged in a matter you don't think about very often. We often are troubled by traffic (and I can imagine in Maryland, it's even more of a problem) but how many people actually do anything to fix it?

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/nov/26/larry-hogan-maryland-i-270-widening-plan-toll-lane/